November 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Archives
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Recent Posts
- D.Ariz.: Smell of alcohol in the car on Navajo Nation was PC
- NY3: No REP in parole GPS monitoring as to police
- TX: An entry into a person’s homestead for civil discovery has limits
- S.D.W.Va.: Subpoenas for records on advocacy positions violated 1A
- CA10: Investigative detention that went on for hours did not become an arrest
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
Section 1983 Blog -
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Category Archives: Staleness
OH8: New information added to older information overcame staleness objection
Three months between seizure of defendant’s cell phone and search of his house based on the product of the first seizure wasn’t stale. Defendant was in a gang that recorded their crimes and uploaded them by phone to social media, … Continue reading
C.D.Cal.: CP warrant on year old info wasn’t stale
Defendant’s child pornography search warrant wasn’t based on stale information even a year old. United States v. Ornelas, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133809 (C.D.Cal. Sept. 27, 2016).* Defendant’s consent was involuntary, but the automobile exception justified the search of the … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: Probable cause did not become stale as defendant drove from Philadelphia to Erie with drugs
Probable cause did not become stale as defendant drove from Philadelphia to Erie with drugs. United States v. Andino, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117097 (E.D.Pa. Aug. 31, 2016). “The fifteen minute period between Defendant’s initial stop and the contested canine … Continue reading
CA9: Motion to suppress after conviction wasn’t timely
Defendant’s motion to suppress her cell phone search two weeks after conviction wasn’t timely, and no good cause shown. Riley being decided after her conviction is not “good cause.” United States v. Gonzalez, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 14298 (9th Cir. … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Independent source rule satisfied; illegal entry didn’t factor into SW
There was an illegal entry, but the police had probable cause already, and the search warrant affidavit didn’t include a word of it. Therefore, the first prong of the independent source doctrine was satisfied. As to the second, the investigation … Continue reading
TN: There is no constitutional requirement that the homeowner be identified in a SW
The IP address for the house defendant was staying in was linked to child pornography, and the search warrant for the premises clearly described the single family dwelling. Thus, all the personal property of those associated with the property, except … Continue reading
E.D.Mich.: CP warrant not stale; in addition, even deleted files were subject to recovery
Ten months was not too old in a child pornography case to make the information stale. Even so, deleted files were potentially recoverable by forensic analysis of the computer. United States v. Pinchot, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67274 (E.D.Mich. April … Continue reading
M.D.La.: SW for examination of boat two years after alleged false BP spill claim for repairs not performed wasn’t stale
Defendant was suspected of making a fraudulent claim in the BP oil spill litigation claiming repairs on a boat. The government gathered information from others that strongly suggested that the boat was neither damaged nor repaired. The government finally applied … Continue reading
CA6: Where def refused to provide combination to his safe during execution of a SW, it was reasonable to pry it open
Defendant showed the police that he had marijuana inside his home and the police obtained a warrant to search his home. Thus, suppression was not warranted because there was an outright certainty, not just a “fair probability,” that the house … Continue reading
CA5: There is no “contemporaneity between the evidence supporting probable cause and the arrest.”
There is no “contemporaneity between the evidence supporting probable cause and the arrest.” It’s up to police discretion when to arrest. Essentially: Staleness doesn’t apply to PC for arrest. United States v. Clark, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 7959 (5th Cir. … Continue reading
CA10: GFE applies throughout: arguable PC overcomes allegation of lack of neutral detached magistrate, overbreadth, and even staleness
“This case calls for us to apply Leon where the judge who issued the search warrant was arguably not neutral and detached. Although we are unaware of any court applying the good faith exception in such circumstances, it is apparent … Continue reading
W.D.La.: BOLO for a stop in an armed robbery case was not stale after 8 days
When defendant voluntarily stops his car and gets out to walk away, the police encounter after that is not a “traffic stop” governed by traffic stop rules. The stop was consensual, but officers did have reasonable suspicion defendant’s vehicle had … Continue reading
NY: Argument can’t be changed between suppression hearing and appeal
The search argument regarding the gun found in the search presented on appeal isn’t the same as the one presented to the suppression court, so it’s waived. (Defendant wins, however, because he was denied confrontation when a DNA analyst who … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Staleness for a wiretap follows the same general rule as staleness for search warrants except it’s to find evidence of conspiracy
Staleness for a wiretap follows the same general rule as staleness for search warrants except that the question is probable cause to believe that the content of telephone calls will help prove the conspiracy. United States v. Ford, 2016 U.S. … Continue reading
E.D.Ky.: One month old information about a gun is not stale
The CI’s seeing a gun in defendant’s house a month before the warrant issued is not stale at all. “The Affidavit established a fair probability that firearms would be found.” Also, the detail of the affidavit provided cross–corroboration. Finally, defendant’s … Continue reading
KY: Lack of staleness is determined from the totality of circumstances if time not specifically stated
Defendant was snitched off as a drug dealer by his own son as a citizen informant. The specific time of the possession of drugs wasn’t specifically stated, but here it can be ascertained by the totality of circumstances. Stating when … Continue reading
Two on staleness: for a stolen rifle and a backpack in the same condition
A search warrant for a stolen rifle was not stale because the CI’s statement of probable cause was two months old. Plenty of authority holds that staleness doesn’t often apply to firearms because they are items that are kept. “Consistent … Continue reading
OH9: For appellate court to consider trial testimony on motion to suppress, motion to reopen or reconsider required
To get the appellate court to consider trial testimony to supplement the motion to suppress, it’s necessary to renew the motion in the trial court after that point. Otherwise, the appeal proceeds on what was developed at the suppression hearing. … Continue reading
D.Minn.: Omission of specific dates in affidavit not fatal where whole showed ongoing drug operation
Omission of specific dates was a technical error where the affidavit as a whole showed an ongoing drug operation out of defendant’s house. Therefore, the good faith exception applies. United States v. Williams, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 154267 (D.Minn. Nov. … Continue reading